


The Maiden and the Selkie

by MagiaZenith



Category: Miraculous Ladybug
Genre: Every fandom needs a coffee shop au and a supernatural creatures au, F/M, and no one is a barista in this fic, mermaid au
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2015-10-23
Updated: 2015-10-22
Packaged: 2018-04-27 13:24:04
Rating: Not Rated
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings, No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,137
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/5050222
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/MagiaZenith/pseuds/MagiaZenith
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>I'll not go to the waves, love, lest you come along with me.</p>
            </blockquote>





	The Maiden and the Selkie

These were the things that the merfolk knew to be true:

1\. Humans are dangerous  
2\. If a mermaid was seen by a human, more humans would be drawn to the area  
3\. If a mermaid was captured by a human, they were doomed  
4\. If a human captured a mermaid and proved it to other humans, the merfolk was doomed

For these reasons, most of the merfolk avoided the shore unless it was absolutely necessary. Land held a variety of treasures and there were some things that one simply couldn’t get from the sea, but the risk was not worth it. Occasionally, a ship would lose the unending battle with the ocean and its cargo would float along the depths, but it was becoming increasingly rare. If a ship did tumble into the waves, the humans had figured out some way to determine where it had been and they would swarm, circling the wreck until even the most ravenous mermaid was filled with dread. If a survivor saw a mermaid plundering the sinking ship, they might live to tell the humans and then where would the merfolk be? Most merfolk feared the shore and the humans that inhabited it.

Marinette was not most merfolk. She was lucky. Luckier than any mermaid who was drawn to the world of humans ever had a right to be.

Although the merfolk had the entire ocean at their disposal, too many were fond of grouping in one place and never venturing out. They moved when they had to, not because they wanted to. Once they found a nice place, the school would settle, picking out their favorite coves and finding the best hiding places for their collections. The merfolk hoarded things by nature, and Marinette was the worst of the bunch in her school. If she saw something worth having, she took it, and returned to where she had found it until she was certain that there was no more to be found. Especially if it was something that she could craft with or something her friends enjoyed.

“You know, you don’t have to keep giving me these,” Tikki had told her once, smiling as the pigtailed mermaid swam up to the small creature with yet another sparkly red stone in her hands. But the wide smile that she had as she held the stone up to catch the sun’s rays piercing through the ocean depths made it worth the hunt for Marinette.

There were some things that Marinette couldn’t possibly collect from the ocean, though, and to do that, she had to venture up to land. The first few times that she had, her dear parents despaired of their wayward child ever returning to them, her blue tailed father racing after his small daughter to drag her back to the reef. But for reasons that no one could figure out, Marinette had a knack for swimming to the shore.

Despite her frequent trips to the surface, she had never once been seen by a human. They were always too far away or facing the opposite direction, all far too occupied with their silly human worries to notice the tiny mermaid swiping sparkly things from their boats or chasing fish along the coral reef. Just before someone would turn their gaze her way, there would be some sort of distraction to draw their eyes or a convenient rock to curl up behind.

Nathanael once told her that she had a special sense for avoiding the humans. Right before he turned as red as his hair and Marinette’s tail, stammering that Alix and Kim were about to have yet another race to see who could swim faster and he had promised a figure made entirely out of coral to the winner.

Marinette surfaces behind a rock, scanning the shoreline with sharp blue eyes. The beach is mostly deserted as the sun hangs low in the sky. The weather hadn’t been the most favorable on that day, so the chance of someone coming up to surprise her was next to nothing. There's a couple walking hand in hand further down the beach, but she can barely make out their figures and they're walking in the opposite direction. They would never see her.

She's about to edge around the rock and get closer, hoping that someone had left behind something on the warm sand, but by chance she spies a glance at the nearby pier. Her body locks up with tension as she beholds a human curled up at the end of the wooden structure, limbs tucked in so tight that she had overlooked them.

Marinette let out a breath carefully through the gills at her sides, forcing her tail straight instead of the curled mess it had become. This wasn’t her first time dodging around a human, and her luck had helped her to spot the potential danger yet again. As long as it held out, she would be fine. It would become another story to tell Tikki; the time that she almost charged the beach without making sure any humans lingered about.

The human in question seems to be despondent. It wasn’t uncommon for humans to drift towards the sea and dramatically look off into the sunset, sighing about their sad human lives and lamenting that they would never be able to swim without looking absolutely ridiculous, the poor things, but this seems different somehow. The golden haired being isn't even touching the water. There's several layers of wrappings swaddling it and those weird casings that they put over their feet are still attached. They aren't remotely prepared to enter the water. From the way that they were keeping their head tucked against their knees, it looked like they didn’t want to.

It's silly, but Marinette feels offended on behalf of her home. The ocean was a beautiful, deadly place that held many wonders and the clear rejection in the human’s posture holds no respect for it. At the very least, they could look and marvel at its splendor!

Her nose scrunches up, the scales gracing her face bunching with her disapproval, but as she did before with her tail, she smooths her features out. If they weren’t looking at the ocean, then they wouldn’t notice her. She's perfectly safe as long as they kept their head down.

The water is calm, gently pulled by the tide into small waves that lapped at the edge of the beach. It would be too easy to spot her red tail in the shallow water if someone got too close. She has to rely on whatever was upsetting the human so much that they wouldn’t look up from the little ball that they had curled into on the pier as she drifts in the water. Marinette peers at the human as she runs her fingers through the sand on the shoreline, feeling along for anything dropped into the ocean. Her eyes are drawn to them in case they spot her even if she is more than a stone’s throw away, but she couldn’t help wondering what had driven them out of their home to the water. It wasn’t unheard of for humans to walk into the ocean and let the waves crash over them until the water stole the breath from their chests. The dark haired mermaid bites her lip, brows furrowing as she picks up a green glass bottle that hadn’t cracked upon impact with the sand. She taps a nail against it, testing its durability.

When she checks on the human, they’re rocking themselves gently on the pier, enough that Marinette’s sharp eyes catches the movement but not enough to fall off of the structure. She can’t help but coo. Poor, poor human. What had them so upset? It was inadvisable to sing so closely to shore, but if Marinette’s voice could soothe them, she would hide herself and hum a few bars to lift the human’s spirits. Humans always loved the merfolk’s singing. A little too much, if they weren’t careful.

Not until after she’s searched the shoreline, though. It was a cool day heavy with clouds, but she finds herself disappointed when she can’t find anything more than worthless debris. She contemplates balling up a flimsy white bag that had found its way into the ocean and throwing it to the beach so that nothing would choke on it, but that might catch someone’s attention. Marinette leaves it, drifting to a nice bed of kelp and sinking her teeth into a bright yellow fish that sticks out amongst the dull green plants. If she has to return empty-handed, she’ll at least return with food in her belly.

The dull _plop_ catches her attention as her throat works to force down the torn chunks of her snack. At first, she thinks that the glint in the water is the reflection of the sun off of a silver fish. When she pushes herself closer, hands pushing her along the sand on the seafloor, she lets out excited bubbles through her mouth at the realization that it’s not a fish at all, but something silver-white circling down.

‘Shiny! In the water! Shiny!’ Marinette’s senses scream out to her, demanding that she capture whatever was glinting in the calm water and _keep it close and never ever let it go_ until she figured out what to do with it. Humans were constantly finding new ways to bring out the best of sparkly rocks and she would find a way to make it even better. All she needed to do was capture the shiny before it was lost to the tide.

Marinette shoots forward, fingers clenching at the prospect of grabbing the shiny. So intent was she that she never took notice of the wooden beams.

It was only when the hand plunges into the water and scoops the shiny out that she realizes that she had strayed too far and no amount of luck would save her.

Frozen in fear, she looks up from the calm, clear water to see piercing green eyes peering down at her, wide with shock. The human’s face… his face is closer than even some merfolk had ever been to hers, separated by scant amounts of water and air. A hand is wrapped tight about one of the wooden beams of the pier and his waist seems to be pressed against the top, his upper body dangling close to the water’s edge like one of the hooks that his kind used to catch fish.

He had barely kept his balance diving down to grab at the shiny that had fallen beneath the waves and the surprise at Marinette’s appearance took away what little hold he had. Suddenly his face is closer, too close and too fast, as he loses his grip and falls head first into the sea. Marinette rears back, pushing up into a curve so that she's belly-up instead of craning her upper body towards the surface. His flailing body knocks into hers and as he fought to push himself upright Marinette could feel the softness of the human’s hands running along the smooth skin of her belly, past the division where skin fades into red scales. His fingers catch on one that had been stubborn the last time that she had paid special care to her tail’s health and the scale brakes off into his hand.

Marinette shrieks, sense kicking in and tail slapping against the human boy as she breaks away from him, shooting past coral reefs and beds of kelp and deep trenches of the ocean until she's so far down that her sight shuts down and she has to navigate by her other senses. Her heart thrums in her chest as her gills flutter in a frenzied rhythm. She iscertain that, for the first time in her entire life, she could have competed against Alix and Kim and left both coughing on the sand that her tail kicked up. It's so dark in the depths that the human’s bright green eyes could never spot her.

“He looked at me… he _looked_ at me…” Marinette whispers to herself, bringing her arms up to wrap tight around her torso. She floats through the water aimlessly. Without a current or the motion of her tail, she's suspended in the open ocean, safe from the roughness of the coral reef and the prying eyes of humans.

It had been the first time that she's ever been so close to a human. His face is clear in her mind, fear making her memory razor sharp. Had she extended her hand just a little bit, she could have touched his sun-kissed skin.

Her muscles in her belly churns in a way that isn't wholly unpleasant when she thinks of how much she wanted to touch the beautiful human boy.

**Author's Note:**

> I rarely, if ever, go through with writing fanfiction for a fandom. I always worry that I won't commit to it, or lose interest, or get too busy to work on it, or any of the other millions things that crop up and prevent me from putting my words to paper. But I love the Miraculous Ladybug, the fandom is so much fun and active, so for once I'm throwing my written work into the fray.
> 
> Like any good Cancer, I adore the ocean. It's so mysterious, beautiful, and it will wreck your day if you don't show it the proper respect. Of course I love mermaids, and the millions of stories surrounding them. If mermaids did exist, they probably would be deep sea dwelling creatures that look nothing like the Disney interpretation, but hey we can dream. On top of that, Heather Dale's "The Maiden and the Selkie" is one of my favorite songs, I highly recommend that you go check it out!


End file.
